George Lawson of Selkirk. II: The Halls of Learning

At the age of fifteen George Lawson entered Edinburgh University. The principal at the time was Dr. Robertson, a noted historian but also the uncrowned head of the ‘Moderate’ (i.e. non-evangelical) party in the Church of Scotland. Although the staff were for the most part of the same stamp there were students there who were evangelical and Lawson found many friends. Chief among them was the godly Michael Bruce whose evagelical fervour found its greatest outflow in poetry. Today he is best known for his contribution to the cause of sacred song in his metrical paraphrase of Isaiah 2.2-6, of which we give the first three verses:

Behold the mountain of the Lord
In latter days shall rise
On mountain tops above the hills,
And draw the wondering eyes.

To this the joyful nations round,
All tribes and tongues shall flow;
Up to the hill of God, they’ll say,
And to His house we’ll go.

The beam that shines from Zion’s hill
Shall lighten every land;
The King who reigns in Salem’s towers
Shall all the world command.

Not that Michael Bruce intended to be a poet. Fasr from it, like a later student at Edinburgh, Robert Murray M'Cheyne, he had a longing to see Scotland made once again 'like the garden of the Lord'. Like Lawson Bruce intended to become a minister, but it was not so intended. He dies of Tuberculosis before he had completed his Divinity course. Lawson was deeply affected by his friend’s triumph in death and he saw that a true faith in Christ had to hold up in sickness and death and in the face of God’s frustrating a man’s best and holiest desires.

In the summer of 1766 Lawson entered the Divinity Hall of his own denomination, which at the time was located in Kinross, in the church of Rev. John Swanton, who was both principal and sole professor of the Hall. George Lawson was determined, by God’s will, to enter the Secession ministry and to do what God had not allowed Bruce to do, to teach Scotland the Gospel again.

And his preparations for that work will be, God willing, our subject next time.